The Last Ballad(114)

“They know something,” Richard said. “I’d say they most certainly know something.”

Minutes later, once Richard had reached the dark open road, Hampton turned and looked out the back window, saw a pair of headlights coming fast behind them. He squinted into the light and imagined his father staring into the cameraman’s bulb in the seconds before his photograph had been taken for the first and only time in his life. Hampton would never see his father’s face again. He’d come south to find him, and now he was leaving him behind for good.





Chapter Thirteen

Katherine McAdam





Saturday, June 8, 1929



Katherine had been alone in the house for what seemed like hours, and as the world outside began to lighten, she realized how long it had been since Ella had first knocked on the door, since Richard had gone downstairs to answer it. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t alone in the house. Claire had gone up to her room not long after Ella and the woman named Sophia had returned to their truck and driven off into the night.

“You come back here if you need anything,” Katherine had told Ella. “You find me, okay. Let me know.” Katherine looked at Sophia. “That goes for you too,” she’d said. “Both of you. I’m here.”

Ella had seemed more relaxed after Richard had left with their friend Hampton. But now, with the house quiet and the sun preparing to rise and Richard still not returned, Katherine found it impossible to find the peace that Ella had shown.

She knew that Richard sometimes kept a bottle hidden in their closet, so she’d gone upstairs and felt along the top shelf where he kept his shoes, toes pointed out. The bottle was set in a pair of wingtips, and she closed her hand around its neck and took it down. She shook a cigarette free from the pack on the dresser and went downstairs in search of a glass and matches.

Instead of calming her nerves, the whiskey and the cigarette had done nothing but sour her empty stomach, and now she stood on the front porch staring out at the driveway, watching the night slowly give way to morning.

It was quiet. The only sounds were the calls of birds and the soft breeze that stirred the trees. Although she knew that another shift was about to begin down in McAdamville, that Edison’s Dynamo No. 31 pumped like a heart in the belly of the mill, Katherine felt that she was the only person awake in the world. She wished that Richard were still asleep upstairs. Normally, if it were a weekday, he wouldn’t stir for another hour yet, wouldn’t rise and bathe and dress for the day until 7 a.m. By that time the world would be awake, and she wouldn’t be alone, waiting, like she was now.

Her ears caught the noise of an automobile crawling up the hill. She recognized the sound of it. It was the Essex.

The car rolled through the driveway, its headlights off. Katherine caught a glimpse of Richard behind the wheel. He would not have expected to see her waiting for him on the front porch, and he did not look for her now. Instead he pulled into the garage just as he always did. Katherine all but ran through the foyer, down the hall, and toward the back door.

Richard had already parked and turned off the car by the time she called his name. He did not respond. Instead he closed the garage doors, laced a chain through the handles, and clicked a padlock shut. Katherine knew that something had gone horribly wrong.

Richard appeared ashen except for a dark spot above his right eye. When he drew closer Katherine saw that his face was bruised and his forehead bloodied. She gasped.

“My God, Richard,” she said. “What happened?”

He brushed past her and walked up the hall to the front door. He extinguished the lights in the foyer, walked into the parlor, and drew the curtains over the window. He crossed the foyer and drew the curtains in the dining room as well.

“What’s going on?” she asked. She closed the back door and walked up the hall. “What happened?”

“Turn the lights off in the kitchen,” he said.

She leaned inside the door and flipped the switch. With the lights off the dawn outside seemed even brighter.

She found him standing in the parlor, drinking a cup of cold coffee from the tray Claire had left on the table.

“Richard!” she said. “What happened?”

He poured another cup, drank it more slowly than the first. She looked at his face, the bruised skin, the blood that had dried to a sticky brown. She wondered if he and Hampton had fought.

“Where’s that boy?” she asked. “What did you do to him?”

“What did I do to him? Me? I drove him to the goddamned train station, Kate. Just like you asked!”

It was the tenor of his voice that reminded Katherine that Claire was upstairs. Claire had been away at school so long, that they did not stop to consider whether or not anyone could hear them when they fought. But they weren’t alone now. She looked toward the foyer, pictured Claire lying awake in bed listening to the voices coming up the stairwell.

Richard seemed to know that he’d spoken too loudly. He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair.

“They’re not still here,” he said.

“Who?”

“Those damned women.”

“No,” Katherine said. “They left hours ago. Hours. Where have you been? What happened?”

He walked around the table and collapsed onto the davenport where Hampton had been sitting just a few hours earlier.